


Family Album

by winterune



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Cloti Fall Festival 2020, Day 2: Tradition, F/M, Family Feels, Feels, Memories, Post-Canon, mentions of the Nibelheim incident and Cloud's mother's death, not anything too graphic though, some trigger warning maybe?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:09:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27623866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterune/pseuds/winterune
Summary: [Cloti Fall Festival 2020]Cloud was cleaning the storage when he came across an old dusty book on the shelves. As he pulled it out, a small square paper fluttered by and landed on his feet. It was a photograph of a little girl with long ebony hair and bright ruby eyes sitting in front of a piano.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 3
Kudos: 42
Collections: CloTi Fall Festival 2020 (ClotiWeek)





	Family Album

**Author's Note:**

> My piece for Cloti Fall Festival 2020
> 
> Day 2 Prompt: Warmth/Tradition
> 
> Inspired by the unused content of FF7 Remake where Tifa would have taken pictures of Marlene with her friends to acquire the items needed to make her dress. Hope you enjoy :)

Cloud was cleaning the storage when he came across an old dusty book on the shelves. Blackened and burnt, it stood out among other thick, heavy volumes and an abandoned computer set, fraying around the edges with a hint of red leather underneath. A little haphazard in the way it was placed, as though whoever had unpacked their moving boxes had dumped its contents with no regard of what was inside. 

Cloud scrunched his brows and tilted his head to the side. He set his rag down and pulled the book out of the shelf, blowing the dust away and wiping the rest from the hard, crisp edges. It looked like it had caught fire a long time ago, but the binding was thick enough to preserve the overall shape. The scorched pages had grown musty, the edges set in permanent blackened curl. The front cover had nothing except an engraved border that had seemed to be embossed in gold once upon a time, but had now faded with age.

Curious of what such a book contained, Cloud gingerly lifted the cover. As he did, a piece of small square paper fluttered by and fell on his feet. Cloud reached down and picked it up.

A photograph? It was so old that the paper had grown yellow and the colors had faded. Upon closer inspection, he could make out a little girl, probably around seven or eight years old, that looked uncannily like Tifa. The same round face, the same ruby eyes. Her long ebony hair hung low down her back as she sat in front of her piano, facing the camera with a huge grin across her face.

A picture from before the Fire…

Cloud recognized the piano. He recognized the room. He remembered sitting by his windowsill every time a piano melody drifted in from the house next door, followed by laughter and giggles as Sara Lockhart taught her daughter how to play the instrument. Cloud’s fingers trembled as his gaze shifted back toward the book.

Lifting the cover once more, Cloud adjusted his position to get the best light possible in the dim storage. _LOCKHART_ was spelled across the front page with doodles and scribbles of what looked like a deformed dog, a flower, and then three faces beneath it. _Papa_ , _Mama_ , and _Tifa_.

Cloud stopped short. It was Tifa’s family album. When he flipped to the next page, the first picture he met was of Tifa’s parents in their younger days. Probably around the time after they just got married. Brian Lockhart had his arm around his wife in front of their two-story house Cloud knew so well, their faces parting into small smiles. The next picture was of the small garden they’d kept in their front yard, to which Cloud often saw Tifa help her mother tend. Then there were many pictures of Brian—Brian going to work, Brian in the living room, Brian having dinner. There were not many pictures of Sara herself—at least not alone. She was always with someone, either her husband or one of the villagers. When Cloud spotted a familiar face, his hand went still.

His mother, in that brown dress and white apron, her blond hair tied back to a ponytail, stood shoulder to shoulder with Sara. The huge toothy grin plastered across her face seemed enough to brighten a room. She looked so young then—much younger than he was now. Had she even had him?

Cloud traced his mother’s face with his finger. The painful twinge to his heart every time he thought about her had gradually ceased, but sometimes, there were moments like this when her face was so vivid that his mind brought him back to that fateful day eight years ago. When he’d stood in front of his burning house while his mother hung limp from a long steel blade, her face so pale, blood trickling out of the corner of her mouth.

_Run…_

Her mouth had formed the word, her voice was nothing more but a strained whisper and a choked gurgling sound; her gaze, scrunched up in pain, bore into his. His heart had seized, as though Sephiroth had stabbed his Masamune into Cloud himself. 

“Cloud?” The call was sudden and loud in the quiet stillness, pulling him out of his reverie. Cloud blinked in surprise, only to find tears had sprung to his eyes. “Cloud, are you here?”

Footsteps approached. Cloud hastily blinked away his unshed tears, slipping the picture of Tifa with her piano inside the photo album before shutting it close. Just in time before Tifa poked her head in, her hair swaying to her side. Her eyes narrowed, her lips drawing back in a frown at the sight of the still-disorganized storage. She stepped inside and folded her arms over her chest.

“Are you still not done? We’ve finished cleaning the bar.”

Cloud chuckled under his breath, willing his voice not to quaver and hoping it was enough to hide his mental disquiet. He placed the book back on the shelf and said over his shoulder, “There’s a lot to clean here, you know.”

That wasn’t a lie. This was their smaller storage room where they kept many of their old belongings, including their undamaged possessions Marle had retrieved from the Sector 7 Slum ruins while they had been away. She, and some survivors, had found the hidden entryway to Avalanche’s hideout. Everything they’d kept inside was unscathed, including Jessie’s computer set, Barret’s punching bag, and Tifa’s camera. Books had been scattered across the floor—the tremor from the fallen plate had probably shaken them off their stack. There was also a TV—but what good would a TV do with no cable or signal?

Those were some that now crowded the space in their small storage. After packing and moving everything to Tifa’s new bar at the new city of Edge, they’d dumped most of everything in the small room at the back. That was well over two years ago now. Neither Cloud nor Tifa had ever cleaned or organized the shelves since then.

Cloud wondered if the family album had been among those belongings found within their old hideout. If so, how had it reached the place? He doubted Tifa had gone back to Nibelheim. Had some traveler found it and brought it with him—and later by chance it had found its way back to Tifa’s hands? That would be nice if that was the case. He wondered if any of his mother’s belongings had survived the Fire. Cloud never thought to look.

He felt Tifa’s gaze on him, the annoyance transforming to concern. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

Cloud gave a shake of his head, averting his eyes away from the album and resisting the temptation to check if there were other pictures of his mother there. But his movements were too slow. Tifa had already followed his line of sight by the time he grabbed the rag from the shelf. He heard her quiet intake of breath. Saw, from the edges of his vision, her taking a step forward before stopping short and pulling back.

“That’s—”

Her voice wavered. Cloud glanced over his shoulder. Tifa’s eyes were wide in a mixture of surprise and apprehension. As though she’d forgotten the album existed. Her voice was quiet when she spoke next.

“Master gave me that—Zangan.”

She finally took that step forward, then another, then strode over to the shelf where the book lay between heavy volumes on computers, programming, and stage acting. She reached over and made to pull the album out, before she paused, her hold on the book faltering. But then she shook her head and set her jaws, gripping the book binding and pulling it out of its place.

The picture fluttered out again. Cloud grabbed it before it reached the floor. When Tifa accepted it from his held-out hand and her eyes finally landed on it, her body went still. One moment; two… Cloud was wiping the shelf with the rag when Tifa broke into a small, melancholy smile.

“I remember this,” she murmured. She flipped the book open, her smile growing by the inches at the sight of her doodles on the front page. “I remember drawing this.”

From the corner of his eyes, Cloud watched as Tifa slowly turned the pages one by one, absorbing every picture in that album that wasn’t burned. He noticed some pages were lost, while others were burned to a crisp they couldn’t even make out the pictures on it. Tifa drew a shuddering breath as she stopped on a rare lone picture of her mother sitting on a rocking chair, her stomach big and round in late pregnancy.

“A few years after I settled here, Master came by one day. Said he was checking up on me, and that he was glad I’d found a way to make my own living. We chatted for a while, catching up. Then he told me he had returned to Nibelheim and found it reconstructed with people living there, as though nothing ever happened.” One corner of her lips twisted into a hateful scorn. “None of our belongings should have survived. But somehow, Master found the book lying around in a ditch a little ways away from the house. It might’ve fallen off a cart or something when they were cleaning up the place.”

Tifa gazed at the picture of her mother. The picture beneath it had Sara holding a tiny bundle in a blanket, with Brian in a rare joyous grin as he looked at the camera. A tear rolled down her eye, and Tifa blinked them away.

“I never had the courage to look through it. So I stashed it among Jessie’s books in the basement.”

She turned to another page, and a quiet laugh burst out of her. She lifted her head. Cloud caught the twinkle in her eyes.

“Look, it’s you.”

Cloud’s eyes widened in surprise, his rag already forgotten while he listened to her talk. Tifa turned the album around and showed him the picture on the top right corner. A small square picture with Tifa _and_ Cloud standing in front of his house. Tifa was grinning from ear to ear, wearing that white one-piece dress with the brown ribbon, one hand held high in a wave while the other clasped his.

 _“_ Look at the camera, Cloud!” Sara had said then. 

“Smile!” his mother had shouted. “Come on, Cloud, say cheese!”

When he had refused, the two women had only giggled among themselves. He remembered scowling and thinking it was such a pain to have to take a picture with the girl next door. What would the other kids say if they saw him? They’d probably jeer and mock him. He’d refused to look at the camera.

But then he’d felt her hand enveloping his and heard her say, “Come on, Cloud. Smile.” He couldn’t have smiled. Not when Tifa had been smiling so close in front of him. She’d only made his ears burn, and he’d turned his face away despite the two women’s urging.

Judging from the picture, Cloud should have been six or seven then. He couldn’t believe he still held a memory from so long ago.

“Here’s another one,” Tifa said, turning to another page and finding a group photo in what looked like a birthday party. There was a cake on the table, and they’d strung a banner across the living room. It read _Happy Birthday, Tifa!_ Cloud had stood on the side, still with a frown on his face. But at least he was looking at the camera now.

“Seems like it’s my seventh birthday.” Tifa’s eyes drew back in reminiscence, nostalgia tinging her voice. “You were so cute back then.”

“I should’ve smiled more then.”

What were photographs if not preserving a moment in time? Had he thought that, had he known those days would come to an end just sixteen years into his life, he might have appreciated taking pictures together more.

Cloud had always thought they were a farce. That people should just live in the moment and let it stay in their memories. If memories failed to retain them, then those moments were not worth remembering. But who was he to say anything about it? He’d forgotten the most crucial parts of his memories. He’d forgotten his friend. He’d almost forgotten his mother. Cloud regretted now not having anything to remember them by.

“Should we make them?” Tifa asked then. “A family album.” He met her gaze, open and inviting, as she smiled a soft smile at him. “I got my camera. We should start making one.”

“Tifa—”

“Photography was a hobby of my mom’s. That’s why she took many pictures. This was only one of the many albums she had in store. The only one that survived...” She pursed her lips, keeping her sadness at bay. “That’s why when a traveling merchant came by the bar a few years ago and I found a camera among his wares…” She chuckled. “It wasn’t that hard to buy it.”

So that was why she always had that camera with her. On days off or break times, she would often go out with a camera in hand, taking pictures of Marlene, of Denzel, of people visiting the bar or just people passing by. They’d smiled at her and posed for her. She had even tried to take his picture a few times, despite his reluctance. Tifa always looked so happy behind the camera.

“Sure,” Cloud found himself saying. A quiet smile broke through his lips. “Why not?”

**~ END ~**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed it :) Feel free to leave kudos/comments if you find the fic to you liking. Thanks!!


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